Re: Namesakes in Brainstorm

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Note: This message is from the outliners.com archive kindly provided by Dave Winer.

Outliners.com Message ID: 4208

Posted by sub
2005-09-23 15:16:04

Peter

I think there are two main approaches to the usefulness of Namesakes. The first is that Namesakes are, for all practical purposes, what most other applications refer to as Clones; i.e. virtually identical entries that automatically reflect any change made to any one of them. The usefulness of clones has more or less to do with what Steve mentions, i.e. referencing information common to various areas of your database without fear of missing the latest updates. For example, in UltraRecall I keep cloned (Duplicate in UR terminology) contact details of relevant people in my respective project folders in addition to my main contact folder.

The second is that, on top of “classic” clone functionality, Brainstorm automatically recognises previously entered identical items. This is inline with Brainstorm’s integrated and seamless approach, i.e. in a classic database you’d have to interrupt your data entry to search for previously entered items and then create links to those.

I personally make regular use of Namesakes, though unfortunately their automatic recognition in Greek is still case-sensitive.

For example, when I write marketing copy, I often make copies of full texts, turn Namesakes Off, edit, then turn Namesakes On again to compare the various versions.

When organising information, if I come across something that would fit in to a previous topic, I don’t even need to search for it; I just type the topic name, promote it and copy the information below previous entries.

When I want to “treat the same topic under different light” I simply keep the information at the same level as the topic title, i.e. not as subsidiary to it. Then I can simply navigate between the various instances to compare notes.

Last but not least, Namesakes fit in nicely with Brainstorm’s free Diary Generator. My “journal” is a thematically organised text but it includes a diary structure accessible from the first page. Before I start writing in any theme I press Shift+Ctrl+L to enter the date; then the entries can be viewed in chronological order by accessing them from the diary.

alx

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